1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to computers, and more particularly to a method, system, and computer program product for concurrent upgrade of data processing computer storage subsystems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Current computing environments provide for mechanisms to upgrade various components of the respective environment. For example, a data processing storage subsystem may provide for a mechanism to upgrade particular components of the subsystem, such as certain hardware parts. In addition, mechanisms may be provided for such upgradeability of a component through a software update. In a best-case scenario, the subsystem may provide for an operating system replacement, adapter firmware replacement, or disk firmware replacement at any one time. While this upgradability is desirable and even necessary in some cases, the current mechanisms present several limitations.
Some limitations described above include any or all of following exemplary limitations. First, many of the hardware components of the subsystem may be physically replaced with the exception of a backplane, midplane, or rack. A particular upgrade may require third party virtualization hardware. Finally, a particular upgrade may require third party, host-side migration software. In short, there is no current mechanism in place for a user to completely and concurrently upgrade all components (e.g., hardware, software, and firmware) in a computing environment such as a data processing storage subsystem at one single point in time, without the use of third-party software and/or third-party hardware.